After more than nine hours of fiercely partisan debate Thursday night, the Minnesota House passed a bill spending money to boost wages for caregivers for the elderly and disabled, guarantee hot lunches for low-income students, fill potholes and expand broadband access in rural areas.

The measure allocates $322 million of the state’s $1.2 billion budget surplus for what House Speaker Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, called “things that (Minnesotans) treasure — schools, caregivers, broadband, economic development, jobs and transportation.”

Republicans called it profligate spending.

Added to the $4.1 billion in new spending that the Legislature approved last year, it is “by far the largest spending increase in state history,” said House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, R-Crown. “This is an expensive tab for taxpayers.”

Republicans tried to rewrite the measure by proposing a huge stack of amendments, but the Democratic-Farmer-Labor majority shot all but the mildest ones down.

Just before midnight, the bill passed on a 70-59 vote along party lines.

Gov. Mark Dayton and lawmakers have already used $443 million of the surplus to provide tax cuts, and they tucked another $150 million away in a rainy-day budget reserve.

The House is scheduled to vote Friday on a second tax-cut bill that would provide $103 million in property tax relief. The Senate is expected to follow suit on its budget bill early next week.

A 5-percent pay raise for caregivers is in both bills. Proponents said the $84 million a year allocated for the increase would preserve the quality of care for 92,500 elderly and disabled persons who live in their homes or community facilities, rather than nursing homes.

The 91,000 health-care workers have had their state pay rates cut several times over the past 12 years, creating high staff turnover and undermining services, said Steve Larson, co-chairman of the “5% campaign” that organized a massive grassroots campaign that won broad bipartisan support for the increase.

“The 5-percent bill is absolutely critical to our home and community-based services for people with disabilities and older adults,” Larson said.

The bill also provides a $2 million rate increase for rural nursing homes that pay employees $14 an hour or less.

Every public school would get a $58-per-pupil increase in state aid under the measure, which boosts school funding by $75 million next year.

It also would guarantee a hot school lunch for students who can’t afford to pay for it. The legislation provides $3.5 million to ensure no student who’s eligible for a 40-cent, reduced-price meal would be turned away.

That action was prompted by a legal aid group’s report in February that found 15 percent of the state’s school districts refused to serve meals to kids who couldn’t pay.

To extend a tuition freeze for a second year, the bill allocates an additional $17 million to the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.

Tired of dodging potholes? The bill provides $25 million to patch the cracks and chasms on the state’s roads after the worst winter in a generation. Cities and counties would share $15 million for fixing their roads, and the Minnesota Department of Transportation would get $10 million to repair state highways.

“Every driver has a horror story about running into a pothole,” said House Transportation Finance Committee Chairman Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis. He added this is the first state appropriation in memory specifically for potholes.

In response to concerns about growing oil shipments, the legislation provides $5 million to train firefighters along rail and pipeline routes and hire two additional rail safety inspectors.

It also provides $25 million for grants to expand broadband access to sparsely populated areas of rural Minnesota that lack high-speed internet connections.

As part of Gov. Mark Dayton’s “unsession” agenda to scrap obsolete laws, the bill relieves the Legislature of an unnecessary duty. It eliminates the need to call a special legislative special session to provide even small amounts of emergency disaster aid. Instead, state officials could tap a new $5.7 million disaster relief fund without legislative approval, saving taxpayers the cost of a special session.

Bill Salisbury has been a newspaper reporter since 1971. He started covering the Minnesota Capitol for the Rochester Post-Bulletin in 1975, joined the Pioneer Press as a general assignment reporter in 1977 and was assigned to the Capitol bureau in 1978. He was the paper's Washington correspondent from 1994 through 1999, when he returned to the Capitol bureau. Although he retired in January 2015, he continues to work at the Capitol part time.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

West St. Paul officials have known for some time that beneath the old Thompson Oaks Golf Course lies a mess. Parts of the course, especially the swampy areas, were a county dumping ground for construction debris. But how much trash and where it is buried are the big unknowns for Oppidan Investment Company, an Excelsior-based developer interested in building multi-family...

A Twin Cities man is dead after the sport-utility vehicle he was driving plunged through the ice on Balsam Lake on Thursday afternoon, according to the Polk County sheriff's office in western Wisconsin. Authorities said they received a 911 call shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday reporting a vehicle had gone through the ice in the narrows separating west and east Balsam...

Twenty-five members of the Minnesota National Guard's Arden Hills-based 247th detachment gathered with family and friends Saturday before deploying to the Middle East for nine months. This will be the first deployment for 22 of the soldiers ranging in age from 19 to 52 years. They will provide support for Operation Spartan Shield in Kuwait and Jordan. The group is part...